Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute to host CO2 conference

The University of Wyoming is hosting a conference to help energy companies use enhanced oil recovery to increase their yields. That’s a technique in which carbon dioxide is pumped underground to help extract oil.

Glen Murrell is the Associate Director of UW’s Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute. He says this year’s conference is putting a major emphasis on helping small operators.

“Wyoming has a lot of smaller oil operators operating fields … and they have a whole different raft of challenges to overcome,” Murrell said, adding that small companies often lack the expertise and financial resources to do enhanced oil recovery.

At the conference, they’ll discuss success stories from other states to help overcome those challenges.

Also on the agenda is the conversion of coal to liquids. Murrell says it’s getting harder to obtain CO2, and he says coal-to-liquids plants could become an important new supplier.

“They do produce a lot of CO2,” he said. “They have to manage that CO2. The days where you could just vent it into the atmosphere look like they’re behind us. So they have to manage it.”

Manage it, as in capture the CO2. They can then sell the carbon dioxide to energy companies for enhanced oil recovery.